8 in 10 UK workers admit they surf the Internet for personal use when they should be working

New research produced by Peninsula BusinessWise, the employment law consultancy shows that:

8 in 10 workers admit to using work time to surf the Internet. Workers spend 4 hours 10 minutes a week personally surfing the Internet when they should be working.

Mike Huss, senior employment law specialist at Peninsula BusinessWise said today:

The problem of workers spending too much time using the internet for their own personal usage is becoming ever more common. We are seeing a lot of calls to our legal line from employers who are wondering what they can do about the situation, whether they can discipline, what rules they should introduce and generally how to tackle the situation.

Internet and email abuse seems to be the most common occurrence. Iím quite shocked that as many as 8 in 10 workers admit to using company facilities to check their email or surf the Internet. Employers need to introduce strict measures that clearly state the times when employees can and cannot use Internet facilities and what they should be used for. Whilst also making it a disciplinary offence which could result in the employeeís dismissal following correct procedures. Employers must ensure that they carry out correct disciplinary procedures in such circumstances otherwise they are leaving themselves at risk of being taken to Tribunal. These should also be drawn into contracts of employment and made clear when new employees commence employment with you. If you are going to allow workers to check their email, browse the Internet then maybe consider allowing them to do this during their lunch, prior to starting work or after they finish.

On average an employee wastes 4 hours and 10 minutes of their employersí time (discounting lunch periods) checking their email and surfing the web. Now this may not at first seem a huge amount of time, but when you have full time workers who are contracted to 39 hours per week then it becomes a substantial percentage. Consider what happens if you employ a part time worker who may only work 20 hours a week, again itís a significant number of hours. One has to take into account the financial constraints that personal web browsing imposes on the business, because 4 hours of lost time is not the only a financial loss; you also lose time when checking for virusís that have may have been accidentally downloaded and then implementing measuring systems all cost time and money. This is without taking into the account the loss of time has on company productivity. Define the rules from the very beginning and control when an employee can and cannot use the Internet, hopefully this should help to increase productivity and drive down costs.